[*PeaceLily*]

Ive just spoken to my therapist and during the conversation she tells me I'm not like other clients therapists generally meet in terms of my past experiences and general situation, and due to the extent of my issues across the board. She made a point about 'apparent competence' whereby she said that I seem extremely competent because of my intellectual connection with ideas and psychological concepts, but that in all other domains I'm actually the opposite- so, profoundly incompetent I guess.

i dont have huge safety issues in terms of self harm and things like that, but she was saying that therapists arent used to dealing with the extent of my issues in navigating day to day life, because I am so triggered and basic tasks are tough for me- I lived in an environment for many years where I was tolf to do the opposite thing to what society would teach was normal, and I wasn't allowed to do basic things like pick something off the floor.I'd get stuff thrown at my just for dropping something, so basic things cause a lot of anxiety, and I haven't mixed with people outside for so many years,(not since school 10 years ago,) that I am having to learn social etiquette each day and it's tough. i am heavily avoidant. I wasn't even talked to at all for months at a time, and I honestly haven't really had a conversation with someone other than family for 2+ years, and my family was who was telling me I couldn't cope and needed medicating, so they were the problem which caused all this.

I feel like a freak due to her comments.I know she's just being honest, but it makes me feel like outpatient therapy won't be able to help me. She's nice, but when i speak to her about trauma, she doesn't seem to to know much about it. I feel like I'm fundamentally different from other human beings and these kind of comments exacerbate that.

Im also thinking that if she thinks my situation is unique in how severely incapable I am, why has there been no structure to the therapy since we started it 2 and a half months ago??.When I said that i didnt think it had helped me so far, she said 'I can see why.' Eh??

I feel like if she thinks I have many profound deficits, which i do in all areas other than intellectually , and she thinks I've told he I feel traumatised, wouldn't she think we need to take a very structured approach to make me feel more safe? I have asked for that but the fact she hasnt taken that approach during the whole course of the therapy- (its been more like talking therapy though it isn't supposed to have been,) and now the comments being said today create feelings in me that she doesn't think I can get better and is just taking the money basically.I know that is cynical

either way I don't think it's helpful to tell me that I am an anomaly in therapy in terms of profoundly isolated i've been for years- I was in a room for years and no one else was allowed in the house- that wasn't my decision.she also said I stood out due to how severe my day to day living skills deficits are and how I've lived all these years/my background. I dont think its helpful because Ive already told her that I feel like a freak.Now I feel like my therapist thinks I'm a freak too, so that's what everybody is going to think if even my therapist thinks it. I feel like she doesn't have hope for me improving.I'm thinking that if I'm so different than people who generally seek outpatient therapy, is outpatient even going to help or is it not going to be intensive enough?

Doees anyone see where I'm coing from with my feelings and questions? I havent read this back because I'm a bit upset about T's comments/my whole situation, so I hope it makes sense!

Thankyou xxxx

[Restin]

Peace Lily, I know each person is unique; so, I don't mean to compete by what I say, but I share most of the descriptions of yourself above. I'm high I.Q but have severe childhood trauma and much that has held me back severely. You may or may not have the right therapist, but that's not for me to determine. But 2 1/2 months is no time when it comes to in-depth therapy. As you are very intelligent, (seriously) I would recommend you read on-line, or buy some books, on modern psychodynamic therapy. "The Basic Fault" by Michael Balint is a good place to start, as it goes way back to early regression. The ways therapists work has changed greatly for the better since Freud.

[Partless]

*PeaceLily*, wow that sounds like such a rough past you had, I'm sorry that you had to experience that. I read your post twice and this is what I think:

Context is key. When did she say that? Because that comment can be interpreted differently. One thing you could do is ask your T directly if she has experience with situations similar to yours and if she feels confident in being able to help you. You see what I did here? Instead of you taking it on to mean you're a "freak" or something, I'm turning it back to the T to see if it was about her lack of experience dealing with your particular set of difficulties.

Of course it is true that you had very difficult past. It may be that some aspects of your situation your therapist has not come across before (e.g. "I wasn't allowed to do basic things like pick something off the floor...I'd get stuff thrown at my just for dropping something.") Sounds like some combination of severe isolation ("I was in a room for years and no one else was allowed in the house- that wasn't my decision.")and long term abuse and almost a kind of opposite of socialization ("do the opposite thing to what society would teach was normal.").

But you're certainly not the worst or freak or anything like that. There are many people out there who have had terribly difficult experiences. Many. But I realize that the other side of this, for you, is your worry about requiring special kind of treatment not offer in outpatient setting. And you also question her competence in terms of not starting with a structured approach. So again, I would recommend directly asking her if she's comfortable with your situation and confident about getting results or if prefers to refer you to a different T.

Do note that couple of months may still be within the "discovery" phase of therapy for your T, as she learning more about you. It really depends, again, on other factors, like your history and the kind of therapy that your T wants to offer you. If this was CBT, I think your T would have already started something, but again, really hard for me to sit here and guess. Talk to your T and go from there.

Lastly, you may have overlooked something but I want to emphasize it cause I think that's key! She had told you that you "seem extremely competent" because of your "intellectual connection with ideas and psychological concepts..." This is a great advantage! Despite your awful past, you have a great mind it seems, to the point that you can mask how much the abuse has damaged you in other ways. This, to me, says there's much hope! In fact, reading your post, I almost couldn't believe you did have this kind of past! I mean that in a good way, like your post could have been written by a successful professional who is just taking little time off to recover from burnout or something. As I was reading about your past, I was like, Wow, I would have never guessed. So stay hopeful, you can reverse the damage, you can learn the skills, you can be "normal"...heck, you can be exemplary!

Good luck

It sounds as though she's not competent to help you. There are those who do know how to handle complex issues such as yours.

I don't know how old you are, but when I was young, I went to live in another country with a different language, just to have people show me how things were done. It was a relief. I'm not suggesting you do that, but I am saying there are ways to learn what you were not exposed to.

You need competent help, but you are not a freak. Just more interesting than most.

[*PeaceLily*]

Thankyou guys for responding.

I haven't finished reading all your replies, but just wanted to say that I think I'm older than you guys would think I am given that this situation was with my parents. I actually got trapped there due to the medicating and basically losing my mind until I was almost 26 years old. I am now 26.

I escaped to a refuge once, and I was doing better. A little under a year after leaving the women's refuge though, I still managed to get stuck back in the family situation again when I went to stay with my mother last August- all the medication stuff started again, and I ended up housebound for 15 months, not going out whatsoever even to a supermarket or anything

Managed to start going to therapy 2 months ago. but that was the only place i would go, but in the last month I've managed to go out a bit more but just to do stuff like visit small shops to buy a bit of food, but even that's still so hard.

I'm going to read the rest of what you guys wrote.I just wanted to clear up that I didn't leave when I was 18. People say I had a bad childhood, but I can deal with my childhood, because at least I still had friends at school, even if they weren't allowed round out house, whereas the situation in adulthood was just so isolated because my all my brothers and sisters and even my mother left, and it would just be me and my dad who had abused us all, but whenever I told my mother I wanted to leave, she always told me that I was the problem and that I needed medication which made me worse,(I probably have bipolar, and the meds triggered mania which I was blamed for by my parents,) Due to the fact that I had a mixed episode on the tablets, my mother who I had never been cruel to, punished me by making me stay with my dad who wouldn't let me cook or even do washing up or sit in the garden, when she moved into her own flat which actually had a room I could have lived in. It sounds pretty bad when I write it down...

I used to have a lot of friends at school/great qualifications etc. but I haven't worked since I was 18 due to the medications and getting stuck there like that, and lost my friends due to everything too. Due to these facts, I dont know anyone other than my therapist and a sister who helped me get away from there, but we arent on great terms because she didnt speak to me for 5 years because I was made out to be 'bad.' i dont really know my sister and she is a very big reminder of it all, and I dont know anyone else so I'm finding it hard to make decisions about therapy and everything very much by myself, so thank god for sites like this!

Don't know if anyone is familiar with narcissistic family dynamic, but I am reading about it, and I really relate to the scapegoat role.

I never actually read any of my posts about this stuff back by the way because I actually find it triggering to read it back, but not so much to write it for some reason so hopefully it all makes sense.

I'll read all your responses and get back to you on them

[*PeaceLily*]

@ Partless- Thankyou for your thorough reply.

May I ask you something? When you said that you thought that I may be a professional suffering from temporary burnout or something, did you think that my thread was going to be about ho about my therapist saying I didn't need therapy? I ask this because my therapist doesn't think I'm competent- she thinks I suffer from 'apparent competence' whereby I am very articulate, and know how to word things, and this makes people stereotype me as 'functional'.

I wanted to ask, because it would be interesting if that was actually happening due to the way I write, as well as how I talk. I'm not as literate as I once was, but my therapist is surprised how much ability I have retained given that I went months at a time without even having my abuser talk to me, and I went years not saying anything to anyone other than my dad if he spoke to me, and my mother if I called her distressed, wanting to leave. My sister did tell me that I'd lived worse than animal, and that she expected me to sound insane when she first spoke to me....so err that's nice. I don't sound insane, but this sometimes makes people, even a therapist easily forget what my past has been like. You kind of wouldn't think I had had this past if you saw me- I know that's a very weird thing to say, but people seem to think that if you dress normally and can have a conversation, then your past couldn't have been too bad.It's ignorant, but it happens

i did ask my T about whether she had worked with someone like me.She said no.and that's when she said I wasn't someone who would often be seen in therapy, because my issues are so severe, whereas most people in therapy have less complex and severe difficulties,(he words, not mine.) She said she hadn't come across it, although obviously she has come a lot of my issues- dissociation, ocd, bdd and triggers etc, but she said that the severity of them, and how long it's gone on for, coupled with how isolated I have been for years, is challenging in terms of what to do. Maybe I should ask her if she thinks I am not going to benefit from outpatient, and need something more intensive? She did ask me if I was seeking treatment or not, because I did mention it to her one time.

Some of what you wrote was very interesting to me, because you talked about the way I talked about things 'masking' the impact of abuse, and oddly enough my therapist said the same thing. She said it like it wasn't necessarily helpful though, in the sense that I am relying on my mind when interacting with her, instead of my feelings. It masks my incompetence in other areas to other people.. I think it's both positive and negative.

A lot of issue with her comments does centre around my very deep feeling of being a freak, I also unsurprisingly blame myself- therefore when she says 'we don't really see people like you in therapy ever', it makes me feel like the craziest, most incapable person on earth. I am not doing great with accepting how abnormal my past has been.I prefer to normalise it, so when she says anything that indicates it has not been normal and that I have a lot of issues as a result of it, I immediately go to feeling like I can't recover from everything that's happened and that it's hopeless, (feeling like I can't recover and feeling hopeless about the future is a belief that is always present for me,)and then I feel angry or sad that this has been my life.

xxx

She sounds incompetent to me.

[Soccer mom]

I would give her more time. Ironically, my T. just told me I was an anomaly last session - she hasn't had anyone with an issue I'm dealing with. She admitted she's tried to read about it but I think she believes the most important thing is for me to move through the feelings vs trying to label and fix it. Also, she once told me that each client is like a puzzle and every time I don't tell her something, it's like I'm holding a puzzle piece. So, I think it takes them awhile to really learn about us and how they can help us.

[guilloche]

*PeaceLily* -

I'm so sorry for all the pain you've been through. I think that, eventually, your ability to express yourself well will be a gift, but how frustrating that it sometimes gets in the way of your healing. And, I'm sorry that your T inadvertently made you feel like a freak! You're NOT. From what you've said, my guess would be that you're actually an amazing person - it takes a lot of resilience and strength to survive that kind of living environment, and to eventually pursue therapy.

How do you feel with this T, other than this comment? Do you have a sense of hope that she's going to be able to help? It might be worth discussing how her comment made you feel, so she can explain what she actually meant. And, I think if I were in your place, I'd ask her specifically - does she feel like she can help, or does she think you need a higher level of care, and what she'd recommend.

((( *PeaceLily* ))) Lots of good thoughts to you, and I'm so glad that you made it out of that environment! (You are out, right? Did I read that right? Or are you still with your mother?)

[Depletion]

Humm, a few thoughts. I didn't have time to read the whole thread, but I thought of a few things when reading your OP.

First: is your T qualified to treat trauma, and how much experience does she have? If she doesn't have that much experience you may want to try elsewhere.

Second: You might consider someone who does work with cult survivors. It sounds like what you wen't through was very sever and involved a very intense kind of psychological abuse.

Third: Have you considered more of a life coach or occupational therapist in addition to therapy, that might be the best way to get structure and help with the day to day. If you can't get that I would fight some more in therapy for the thing that you need, or find a T who will work with you in that way. I think that it is right to trust your intuition on these kinds of things, and if that is what you feel you need your T should listen.

[SoupDragon]

l just wondered whether you access your therapist via the NHS or privately and what your therapists background is?

l know within the NHS Depression and Anxiety Service some of the practitioners are only trained to work with mild/moderate issues.

l had a referral to them and never returned. l didn't feel that the person I saw could see beyond their tick box targets.

l agree with the posts above, that this says everything about your therapists competence and is not about you being "unusual".

Soup

[dark_sweetie]

I thibk you should find a trauma T. I have a very similar situation (it was 7 yrs in my case, but same type of thing, and to an extent it's still that way) and my T has been fabulous about it. Don't waste your time with someone who gets so wrapped up in the exterior and won't look inside

[Partless]

Originally Posted by *PeaceLily*

@ Partless- Thankyou for your thorough reply.

very welcome PeaceLily I have selectively quoted your post to reply to some points you made:

Originally Posted by *PeaceLily*

May I ask you something? When you said that you thought that I may be a professional suffering from temporary burnout or something, did you think that my thread was going to be about ho about my therapist saying I didn't need therapy? I ask this because my therapist doesn't think I'm competent- she thinks I suffer from 'apparent competence' whereby I am very articulate, and know how to word things, and this makes people stereotype me as 'functional'.

No, frankly I did not think much of the example I used. I was just trying to say you speak in a way that shows good intelligence. Or in other words, I would have never guessed from your writing that you had a history of terrible and prolonged abuse. I was merely suggesting that I understand what your therapist is saying, about the apparent competence, but was not suggesting that you are competent and claiming not to be. Sorry if my example was not clear.

Originally Posted by *PeaceLily*

i did ask my T about whether she had worked with someone like me.She said no.and that's when she said I wasn't someone who would often be seen in therapy, because my issues are so severe...Maybe I should ask her if she thinks I am not going to benefit from outpatient, and need something more intensive?

You know, sometimes therapists work with a team. Are you on meds? Like there could be a psychiatrist for medication management, a therapist, maybe a group for social skills or mindfulness or whatever. It depends on what kind of treatment you're getting, what your therapist's approach is, etc. So some people, despite quite severe histories, do receive outpatient treatment. Inpatient is usually reserved for people more likely to want to harm themselves or others or requiring immediate medical help or around the clock observation (there are other reasons too). So I think even outpatient can offer something intensive but again, it really depends on other factors.

Originally Posted by *PeaceLily*

Some of what you wrote was very interesting to me, because you talked about the way I talked about things 'masking' the impact of abuse, and oddly enough my therapist said the same thing. She said it like it wasn't necessarily helpful though, in the sense that I am relying on my mind when interacting with her...

Yeah, I know many therapists prefer to focus on emotions. Myself I used my mind to appear normal enough and function but people were unaware of the emotional damage I had, but at some point it became so much that I could not go on and had to go face the emotions.

Originally Posted by *PeaceLily*

A lot of issue with her comments does centre around my very deep feeling of being a freak, I also unsurprisingly blame myself- therefore when she says 'we don't really see people like you in therapy ever', it makes me feel like the craziest, most incapable person on earth. I am not doing great with accepting how abnormal my past has been.I prefer to normalise it, so when she says anything that indicates it has not been normal and that I have a lot of issues as a result of it, I immediately go to feeling like I can't recover from everything that's happened and that it's hopeless, (feeling like I can't recover and feeling hopeless about the future is a belief that is always present for me,)and then I feel angry or sad that this has been my life.

I understand that. It is a frightening thought, because you're going to a therapist to help you and if the person says they never dealt with a person with your situation, how could they help you? Especially if you already have a low opinion of yourself. As if something is wrong with you that a therapist can't help you. But that's why it's important to go to the right therapist.